Family still waits for answers five years after girl's disappearance

She's 19 years old and doesn't resemble her daughter or anyone in the family, Shelley Campbell said.

"I don't know who that is," she said of the professionally aged photo of her daughter, Wendy Hudakoc, the Collier County teen who disappeared five years ago today.

"In my eyes, she's still 14 years old," Campbell said.

The photo on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Web site shows a photo of Hudakoc as experts believe she'd appear now.

For five years, the family has waited for answers.

Hudakoc, then 14 years old, disappeared on Nov. 15, 1998, after leaving a party in Old Naples.

She'd sneaked out of the house to go to the party. She left with a then- 20-year-old man who has said he brought the girl back to her Golden Gate home. He's not a suspect, but hired an attorney to deal with police inquiries.

The teen took nothing with her -- no clothes, nothing from her bedroom. That was an early clue that she wasn't a runaway, investigators said.

No one has gotten a telephone call from her. No one has received a letter in the mail.

Nothing new has developed in the case in recent months, Collier County sheriff's spokeswoman Tina Osceola said.

When the search started a half decade ago, family members exhausted every possibility.After months of plastering her photo on poster boards from Immokalee to the Naples beaches, after trips into Central Florida and South Beach where investigators and searchers tracked down sightings and after lie detector tests issued to the whole family, there were no clues leading to her whereabouts. Searchers even went international, checking out Canada where Hudakoc's father lives. No luck.

More than two years ago, her mother gave up hope. She believes her daughter is dead.

And lately, Collier deputies haven't turned up any clues. The family isn't even sure that Collier detectives look at the case regularly anymore.

"They call every once in a while with information on things we've chased down years ago," Campbell said.

But she said she'd like to know where her daughter's body is. She thinks someone in Collier County knows.

"If they could just point us there," Campbell said.

She said maybe time will help solve the case and maybe someone who has information now will come forward because five years have passed. There is a $10,000 reward still being offered by Crimestoppers. Anonymous tips can be called in at 1-800-780-TIPS.

Campbell is waiting for that one tip.

"I would have never dreamt that five years would have gone by and nothing had developed," Campbell said. "I know people are tired of it. But I want to keep it out there. Somebody out there knows."